The Need for Moral Choices and Consequences

Why do bad things happen to good people? Why did God let 9/11 happen? Why didn't God stop them from taking over the plane? Why is evil allowed to exist? What can God do about it? These questions and more are being tackled by the Apologetics Bloggers Alliance this weekend. The ABA (not a lawyer's association) is a sub-division of the Christian Apologetics Alliance. 20 or more posts are being offered on various concerns in relation to the problem of evil, many of them focusing on or incorporating the events of 9/11/2001. See also: the listing of all the posts here!

Must there be choices and consequences for those choices? The first part of the question is easy to ascertain. If God wishes to have creatures who freely choose to love him, then they must be free in some moral way to choose the good (God) or evil. However, some might be tempted to ask, “but why couldn’t God simply allow the choice to be made and then take away the consequences?” After all, if a man fired a gun, intending to kill his target, we still hold him morally guilty even if he misses completely. God could cause every shot to miss the mark, or the bullet to disappear, or for it to strike but do no damage nor inflict pain.

The answer is that in order for significant moral choices to be made or moral growth to take place consequences must be a regular part of life. First, let us examine the significance of moral choices. Most people would admit that, were there to be no negative consequences, they would not have too much difficulty in robbing a bank. This is not the same as saying, “if I could get away with it, I would rob a bank.” Rather, the customary reasons for actually refraining from robbing the bank are absent. You would not be prosecuted under any circumstances. There is no economic impact. There is no psychological impact to anyone. No one, including the bank or insurance companies, has actually lost any money.

Some may say, “I would refrain because stealing is wrong!” However, when pressed, many people will offer the above reasons as to why stealing would be morally wrong. Hence, stealing really isn’t wrong after all in these circumstances. Yet God has commanded against it. Only people with a desire to serve God completely would refrain from stealing.

Moral choices also tend to lose their significance when the consequences of nature are regularly interrupted. Geisler concludes that such a move by God would rob any human thinker of his moral intuition. He claims, “Rational decisions are dependent on knowing that events will unfold regularly . . . we will not know what acts would be harmful and what would be helpful . . . we would not have a rational basis for knowing [some act is detrimental or wrong] . . . this is why we do not hold little children culpable.”[1]

I think the above quote is very correct. If God regularly interrupted the consequences of moral choices, then the only way we would know actions were good or evil is by information transfer. We would have no idea why these things were wrong, and anyone who did not already believe the information they were given would have no moral compass whatsoever (for their rational basis for moral obligations [not merely values] is gone).

Next, a lack of consequences for moral actions means that no moral growth is taking place. If there were no moral consequences and there are no moral lessons learned experientially, how can one possibly grow? To grow morally means to conform better to the objective moral standard by one’s character. But how can one’s character be expected to improve upon whatever its default status is without any sort of consequences to the moral choices made? I do not see how it can be done in the context of a free will.

Consider 9/11 for our final point. Ten years ago tomorrow, two airplanes changed the course of the United States. Couldn’t God have prevented that? Of course he could have. Since it is true that moral growth requires choices and consequences, and moral choices (to be rationally informed) also require moral consequences, it seems the burden of proof is on the objector. That is, the question becomes why God intervenes when he does. The answer must be: when something will ultimately turn out better than it would have otherwise.

The victims of 9/11 all had different lives, and their lives in turn touched others. In fact, an entire nation was affected by this act. Many of us grew as people as a direct or indirect result of the consequences of a horrible moral choice. Does that mean the act was not terrible? Of course it is terrible. Moral growth does not make the act itself any closer to being good than it was before. Rather, God’s working through moral consequences is a necessary result of free moral action coupled with a moral growth that would not take place otherwise.

Geisler maintains, and I agree, that a God who simply takes away all consequence is just as unloving as the parent who gives their child everything they ever wanted.[2] In the end, it simply spoils them, not helps them. What happened ten years ago was meant for evil, but God meant it unto good.

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                [1] Norman L. Geisler, If God, Why Evil? (Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House, 2011), 88.

                [2] Ibid., 85-86.

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